All Pure Souls

by John Brooke

  Another part of her is thinking of picking up her new chemise from Ondine Duguay tomorrow and showing it to Raphaele on Saturday after supper. That would definitely make you feel better...

  The cab drops them at the top of the circle. She leads them past the messy children, the dulled-out adolescents, the acquiescent mothers, the shuffling papas. They gather round the arborite table, poverty’s dull centrepiece, stained with spills, littered with spent matches, glasses, three emptied bottles and a quarter of another. Inspector Nouvelle has her nose in a charred dish, nodding “uh-hmm, yes...” to IJ specialist Charles Léger. This is the power of positive suggestion. As Charles bends to take a whiff, the pudgy face of Chief J. of I. Gérard Richand appears at the apartment door. Bowing slightly, she says, “Monsieur le Juge...thank you for coming.” And a minute later, “Commissaire...” as Claude Néon walks in, having in turn received a curt call from Gérard demanding what the hell?...and looking more than a little embarrassed. There’s no real reason for any of them to be there. Suicides are for the City police.

  Still, it’s gratifying to see how quickly those in charge can respond when they get worried.

  These two distracting latecomers instinctively hold still as Charles Léger sniffs again. He offers a flat scientific nod indicating yes. Jean-Marc Pouliot lingers over Colette’s ashtray for a full minute. He extracts a sooty morsel, tests it on the isolated end of his finger before stating, grave and absolutely professional. “Ah yes, I do remember that.”

  Now Raphaele Petrucci takes a turn...

  Claude asks, “Why exactly are we here, Inspector?”

  “We have a second violent death of a person connected to the cult at Mari Morgan’s. I have statements and letters from Colette Namur attesting to that connection, and statements from my three colleagues here attesting to the possibility of physical evidence which links the two deaths, and which may shed important light on the circumstances surrounding the murder of Manon Larivière.”

  “And what evidence would that be?”

  “Smoke — from the burning of apple twigs.”

  “It’s got this sweet tinge to it,” adds the pathologist, thoughtful (beautiful!); “hard to mistake.”

  “All we need now,” Aliette explains, probably a little too like some cheery Girl Guide leader organizing the next activity, “is the camisole and a thorough analysis at the best lab money can buy and I’m sure this case will take on some extraordinary new dimensions.” Far too cheery. Pushing her luck. Her little victory...low-key, Aliette! Because so often a case is a series of little victories over the system and its keepers, and they have to be gently won.

  Gently? Fine, you got it...

  Yet the moment seems inevitable vis-à-vis the shadowy methodology of Inspector Aliette Nouvelle. Neither Claude, now their de facto “leader” by virtue of his presence, nor Gérard, who authorized the release of Manon Larivière’s body and effects, perhaps prematurely, and hates the thought of a mistake, has any choice but to also take a whiff of the ashes in the dish. Then Claude and Gérard leave, neither of them happy. It’s Thursday afternoon and Gérard’s wife has ordered him to get home early to pack the car. And Claude knows he’ll be stuck with whatever the Judge is thinking.

  Raphaele Petrucci leaves, too. “Merci, monsieur,” in her measured, professional voice. But he has performed perfectly and knows it. His warm smile says she can expect more of the same on Saturday night.

  Charles collects the ashes and sets about testing his machine’s reading against Colette Namur’s clothes; back to science now, it’s not as if we’ll convict on the vagaries of the human nose. Jean-Marc beckons from the bathroom. The attending City cop has pointed to the message scrawled in blood on the rim of the blood-stained tub.

  ...Three words? First one mostly washed away; or is it just a bloody smear? The second looks like eau; water? Or maybe beau? And then maeu — or is that marn? ...maev maybe? Beau muet? Beautiful silent. Silent water... Beau muer? Beautiful to change...as in transform. No — Colette Namur could spell, if nothing much else, her letters to Vivi prove that. Her grammar was not so bad either. A name perhaps. Mari? That fits. No — feminine: it would have to be belle, not beau... Beau mauve. A lovely mauve...what? Sunset? A nice thing to write before dying. But why? The inspector can make no sense of it. She tries to imagine: the steam, the water turning pink. A woman in her bath. Dying. Private, warm; and slow...time to prepare for a transition, time to drift away.

  And was the goddess waiting?

  What...? remnants of a bloody prayer traced by a lazy finger softly seduced by death?

  Leaving it to an equally puzzled Jean-Marc Pouliot to ply his skills, she goes out to talk to the neighbours.

  It takes a while to work her way around the circle, through the men who don’t know and couldn’t care, and all the mothers and their complaints about Colette’s very bad example and how she always seemed to believe she was never really one of us... And none of these circle-dwellers has any real idea where young Vivi’s gone: Been sent off to some school or something? Hah! More likely an abortion. Colette had told different stories all around the block. She’s probably just run away like all the others... Maybe she’ll come back now Colette’s gone. Then again, looking around, why would she? A boy called Jerôme is swinging on the squeaky swings in the middle of the filthy park, headphones on, crooning along with the radio. Dopey, even happy looking where his peers have perfected scowls to complement the gelled spikes in the flame-coloured hair, the bolts through the oily nostrils. Maybe Jerôme’s a bit on the slow side, or maybe he’s a budding poet; shutting down his music, he brags of never missing a day on the swings since he was eight.

  Aliette agrees it’s quite a record. They chat as he swings by... He misses Vivi... He confides he loves her despite the fact that Rachelle...that’s her over there on the teeter-totter, watching through menacingly kohled eyes...despite the fact that Rachelle has gone the distance and had a bolt inserted in her tongue.

  “Why would Rachelle do that?” wonders a curious inspector.

  “Pour la pipe c’est formidable!” (It makes for incredible head!) explains Jerôme, hopping off. “Rachelle really loves me. But I still have this thing for Vivi, I really do. It’s like destiny or something, you know?”

  “Everyone has one,” notes the inspector. Even the ones who dwell in these HLMs...

  The last Jerôme had seen of Colette was yesterday afternoon, walking back from the store with some bottles and a woman; “...a cool woman with cool clothes. Fox face, sort of, could’ve been a probation officer or social worker but they never look so cool, you know? — the six hundred-franc blue jeans from the boutiques in Basel?”

  Which tells the inspector most everything she needs to know. The City team had collected the blade and would keep it till the file was closed, or turn it over to IJ, if requested. But the blade’s tin-foil wrapper is still on the table, in plain sight with the rest of the detritus of Colette Namur’s last day. Now it’s sure Colette’s friend’s prints will be all over those bottles, that wrapper, but not the blade; she wouldn’t have touched the blade...so surely that this friend will have no qualms admitting she’d been there. To try to help Colette. To offer some guidance through another rocky time. You have to have friends when things go bad. Women have to stick together. Aliette can hear Flossie Orain’s smooth voice as if she were still sitting there, helping Colette work it out.

  Aliette reads the note again; it was in an envelope addressed to Vivienne Namur lying on Vivi’s bed:

  Vivi. I did my bit. I’ll see you when you’ve done yours.

  Love, Maman.

  Poor Colette. All that remains is to deliver it. Flossie’s still blameless, Flossie’s safe. Who needs to kill when all you have to do is talk — over a lot of wine and possibly also a beer?

  Walking away from that dead-end circle, going into the high street to find a cab, she looks back. Yes — dwellers, too far from it all to ever be considered citizens. It’s their murmurings as
they sit with their young, all life revolving around the tiny park, the constant creak of the rusty swings, creaking fruitlessly like a one-note message from a distant outpost, sending...sending, but receiving nothing back to bring the outpost closer to the world: swinging, swinging — their message, their diversion. Colette Namur had “saved” her daughter from this, then had gotten out.

  And so back to Mari Morgan’s. A man with a briefcase identical to her own is arriving at the same moment and holds the door for her. A gentleman. Someone might have thought they were a couple: a handsome and successful couple with his and hers cases, arriving for an evening of something different at the end of another day downtown. But Martine is there to greet this man and they head straight into the bar. While Aliette stands watching another man. This one’s struggling without success to move Louise out of his path and mount the stairs. “But she needs me!” protests the man, several times. Aliette hears the accent. English or American, it sounds like.

  “No,” says Louise, “she needs us.”

  “A client,” mutters Flossie, suddenly at the inspector’s side. “Vivi’s American. Some get like that.” Stepping forward, she takes control of the situation; Louise stares at Aliette for a strange moment, then heads back upstairs. Flossie’s polite but firm as she guides the man out, advising, “Give her a few days, monsieur. She needs time to think...” Then, voice altering, “Of course if there’s anything else we can do for you...”

  Then a quiet tête-à-tête with the police.

  “How is she?” asks the inspector.

  “Best left alone to think it through.”

  “Colette might have been as well.”

  “You would think so. She begged me to come.”

  “With a razor blade, Flossie?”

  “I always carry one, Inspector...been too many places in my life where it’s made the difference between a few words and much worse. I took it out to make a point.”

  “What point was that?”

  “To challenge her into taking some responsibility for her decisions. Colette Namur always followed along like a sheep, then blamed everything on the big bad world. She was hard to admire. You have to let a person have her own life and fate can be mean — and so you try to help. But after a certain point...I got mad. I told her she should have the courage of her convictions or there was no point. Which is true, no?” Aliette Nouvelle won’t answer that and Flossie Orain’s frank gaze is transformed by an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t think she would go that far.”

  “You thought she might be saved by her convictions.”

  “Colette missed it. She missed on everything.”

  “You used her, Flossie...you used her terribly, somehow, to murder Manon Larivière. I’m going to prove it.”

  “But how could I have?...and why would I?”

  “I’m not sure. But people are desperate and they do follow along like sheep. I think you talked Colette into killing Manon. An initiation fee? The only way into this place for Vivi? Her little bit for the goddess? I don’t know, but I will find out.”

  “Please don’t be absurd...not today. Even if I could, Colette could never do such a thing.”

  “Not alone. Probably not alone. That Francine — pretending to take care of the old man who was Manon’s friend — ”

  “Who?”

  Aliette can’t help but smile — but sadly, feeling tired, sick of it. “Doctor Cyr’s non-live-in?”

  Flossie’s eyes don’t waver. “I thought she was Léonie.”

  “No, Flossie...Francine. They’ve both disappeared.”

  The smile coming back is ironic. “Well, at least that’s halfway reasonable.”

  “Yes,” agrees Aliette, “far too reasonable.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do — and I’m certain you talked Colette Namur straight into that tub.”

  “Inspector Nouvelle,” pausing...thoughtful, “sometimes belief has to be stronger than feelings. It’s the only source of power. Why do you think I gave you those letters? I could have burned them. I gave them to you, freely. Do you think I didn’t feel her pain?”

  “I don’t know what you feel, Flossie. Here’s one more letter,” taking it from her pocket, “but it’s not for you. Are you honest enough to deliver it?”

  Flossie takes the letter. “All my life,” she says, suddenly a step closer, confiding like a long-time friend, grotesque in her presumption, “one thing I’ve never been able to cope with: the weak ones who latch on... They latch on and keep telling you how much they love you so you’ll let them drag along behind. It drives me crazy.”

  Aliette steps back, away from the hand that reaches to touch hers. “I’m not a weak one.”

  “I know that. I think we have a lot in common, you and I... You say you don’t know how I feel. Well that’s how I feel. I wish you’d stop thinking this way. I can’t see how it will help anyone.”

  At this moment Aliette would like nothing more than to just smack Flossie across the mouth. And add a few carefully chosen words. But she won’t. Undignified. Police work is a human game, a highly civilized one; in the end dignity can be the deciding factor... No, as the gall of disgust, possibly even hatred begins to tie a knot inside her stomach, the inspector simply thanks her adversary, while her eyes say something along the lines of, At least now it’s plain. Then she takes her leave. Gracefully.

  Aliette Nouvelle: graceful.

  Flossie Orain: fading back behind the opaque mask as she softly closes the door.

  2.

  An exhumation order for the remains and effects of Manon Larivière signed by Gérard Richand is on her desk when she gets back to the office to do her report. Good; she was pretty sure it would be. Still nothing on the missing car, its elderly owner or an ex-Arletty look-alike. Jean-Marc Pouliot is still fooling around with three-word combinations that might befit a last farewell from a bloody tub. But one small step: we’ll get our Marilyn Monroe’s underwear back. Is that worth missing the plane for, her family, the beach, a rest? It will have to be. She goes home and calls her maman, tells her, far too businesslike (only way she can manage it), that they should not expect her at Belle Île.

  Next morning the inspector sits beside Claude in the back of his official car, following a police hearse out to the grave site. Early, 7:30; they dig at 8:00, before any funeral guests have a chance to witness the lurid and always fantastic front-page act of digging up the dead. We don’t need that, thank you... Claude’s not talking to her. Pissed off at the way she worked around him. Not that it matters. All that matters is the mandate from Gérard. The back-hoe and two men arrive for work at the regular hour, unaware of their task, sleepily expecting to dig another grave. Working in the other direction does not bother them though, until, thirty minutes later, when they hoist the box out of the ground, sweep it clean and slide it into the back of the hearse. Something’s not quite right — she can see it on their faces. She asks the City cop who drives the hearse, “What’s their problem?”

  “They were saying either she rotted at record speed, or it’s empty.”

  “Oh Jesus!” exclaims Commissaire Néon an hour later, when the latter is confirmed: there is no Marilyn Monroe facsimile in this box, no elegant underwear either.

  Inspector Nouvelle is rocked as well, but not completely surprised. The bottom keeps falling out of this one at every turn... Mmm, and the bottom is falling out of her commitment to find an answer for a woman who got trapped inside a star.

  So they had to steal her body back. How creepy can you get?

  She sits at her desk with nothing. She was going to call and cancel her flight, stay on the job and track a goddess, uncover her nature, the compelling thing that lives in a goddess’ heart. But now... They’re so tedious, these people with their little beliefs. They must be little, the way they hide them away: little beliefs, too precious to withstand the light of day; and they must be tedious, tedious at heart, the way they all fall into line. Hare Krishnas smiling on the s
treets of Paris. Moonies getting married en masse in a stadium. Residents of a fortress in Texas following their gun-loving leader into the flames. Citizens of Jonestown — and their dogs! — hiding in the jungle, lapping up that deadly Kool-Aid. All together, brothers and sisters! And just last fall: the burned-out bunker of the Order of the Solar Temple just down the road in Switzerland, so elaborate in its crimson accoutrement, so rich and pure of vision. All ashes. Did those believers make it through?

  Manon Larivière. Colette Namur. Cut from the same sad cloth, no? Asking for it, no? Hate to think it, but Flossie’s right: fate can be mean, and all the more so if you give yourself completely. Dying for something called belief? Tedious and pathological. Well, allez-y, go for it, sisters! And what a silly Aliette for thinking they needed the likes of her. Gazing out at a sunny sky, she’s on that plane to Nantes. And not... Wavering between a sense of duty and futility, burdened with this feeling of throwing good energy after bad, disgusted by a world full of half-brained sheep.

  Does she really care about stupid prostitutes?

  What about useless mothers on the edge of town?

  We have a man in provisional detention. The men who run the system perceive a pattern in this man’s life and logical reasons for him to be there. Herménégilde Dupras is their solution to the crime and the best way in to the roots of their sense of the larger problem. And we have an inspector in the grips of that provisional feeling. It crops up when she’s stalled. When she knows she’s got nothing solid on Flossie Orain. Is the journey through all the lies and the sheep — yes Flossie, they’re a pain in the ass and there are always too many, milling around the way sheep do, blocking the way to the truth — is that journey worth the trouble? There’ll always be another Marilyn Monroe fan. Legions of Colette Namurs. And you certainly don’t need a Herméné to run a Mari Morgan’s. Who learns? What gets better? Mmm, this one’s not worth it. Stay on that plane, Aliette. It’ll keep till I get back. Oh yes, the goddess keeps. Whatever’s left of it...

  There’s lots left — or it wouldn’t be a journey, would it?